


December 23rd

by twofrontteethstillcrooked



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Christmas, Fluff and Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:53:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22026634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twofrontteethstillcrooked/pseuds/twofrontteethstillcrooked
Summary: "If you don't say something out loud in the next five seconds, I'm calling for backup," Flint said, in a tone just shy of irritable."It's possible I'm not a good person," Silver said. "Likely, even."Or, two days before a major holiday, John Silver is having a merry crisis.
Relationships: Captain Flint | James McGraw/John Silver
Comments: 20
Kudos: 158
Collections: Black Sails Gift Exchange 2019





	December 23rd

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Miss_Nixy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Nixy/gifts).



> Written as a gift for [miss-nixy](https://miss-nixy.tumblr.com) \-- hope you are having a wonderful holiday season!
> 
> Happy holidays to everyone else reading this as well. May we all have a survivable 2020! :))
> 
> [eta 2 Jan. 2020] Finally figured out how to actually gift it to [miss_nixy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Nixy/pseuds/Miss_Nixy) this morning, because I am slow.

Silver hadn't registered how cold his hands were until a much warmer pair of hands closed over them.

When he opened his eyes, Flint was kneeling at eye level and said to him, "Hey, welcome back."

Looking up, Silver saw that night had fully arrived. Clouds reflected the thousands of Christmas lights that festooned much of the town's small square where Silver was sat on a bench. 

Holiday lights, Silver corrected in his head; it wouldn't do to attribute the decorations only to Christmas, even though the town had made exactly zero efforts to represent any heritage other than Christmas, a fact that Silver had been grouchy about all month. Not that he'd done any better, since his breakfast and lunch cafe across the street was a monument to the same lack of creativity as the square, albeit equally -- if he did say so himself -- festive, or at least merry enough to make the customers feel welcome as the days grew shorter, though why they'd be less happy in the face of more diverse representations of December was another grimness to ponder at a later date.

Flint's warm hands were squeezing Silver's. "Next year, either volunteer for the town beautification committee or I'm going to strangle you," Flint said mildly. 

He pulled one of his hands away to smooth a line between Silver's eyes with his thumb. Silver blinked at him and retuned his attention. Flint's expression was both exasperated and kind, as though he could read every thought Silver couldn't avoid thinking like a gerbil caught on a plastic hamster wheel, and had decided to like Silver anyway. Silver felt exasperated with himself, but it was a faraway notion. What was more pressingly important was determining what hue Flint's eyes were, what specific shade of green, here in the strange dappled light of nighttime dotted with fallen stars. Olive? Too drab. Holly? Too pointy. Perhaps ivy? A clinging, supportive green. A green a person could see every day and never grow tired of.

"If you don't say something out loud in the next five seconds, I'm calling for backup," Flint said, in a tone just shy of irritable.

"It's possible I'm not a good person," Silver said. "Likely, even."

He waited for Flint to pull his hands away entirely. When that didn't happen, Silver closed his eyes; they'd stop burning if he kept them closed.

He felt more than heard Flint sigh. "C'mon," Flint said, standing and making an _oof_ noise when his ankle cracked. "We're about to freeze to death out here, and I'd rather debate your essential level of moral virtue inside, where there's liquor."

Silver let him help him upright -- Flint was careful not to knock into his crutch -- and pull him across the street to the town's only bookstore. Flint owned the shop and lived in the back. The shabby settee just inside the door was as good a place to crash as any. The contrast between the squish of the cushions and the heat of the store versus the hard bench in the cold night air seemed especially severe all of a sudden. It was taking Silver a lot of effort just to keep his teeth from shattering out of his head.

"Up, up," Flint said, tugging on Silver's hand. "Don't fall asleep there. I have multiple rooms you can sleep in just a few feet away."

Where Flint lived was a modest dwelling, a boxy former rector's add-on renovated into a two-bedroom, one-bath with galley kitchen and a larger room that encompassed a built-in bookcase, a sitting area, and a tiny hearth. Usually, Silver found the space to be comfortable and unremarkable. If he had, from the couch, on occasion marveled at the way firelight draped across Flint, making him seem painted with copper and making Silver's breath go futzy, well. Silver wasn't blind, for pity's sake. But those moments would flit away, and he'd go back to having working lungs.

Whatever seasonal doldrums, fugue state, undigested bit of beef, or total whacko breakdown had earlier sent him spiraling faster than an ice skater on acid lifted the second he stepped through the door. First, through the window, a star was sparkling in the bare branches of the oak tree in Flint's back yard. 

But secondly, inside, there was greenery everywhere, evergreen, evermore. Boughs of cedar and twinkling gold lights were laid across the hearth. Pricklier branches of pine with cones still attached edged the windows. A swag of blue spruce and white fairy lights demarcated the kitchen boundaries. Rosemary and bay leaves circled an old lantern on the living room coffee table. All were interwoven with ruby red silk ribbons; a scent of sweet frost and spice permeated everything. The scene was tasteful and, more than that, beautiful -- a forest brought indoors to celebrate the darkest time of year with the promise of spring's renewal to come. 

Or, at least, Silver knew that was what it was supposed to symbolize. What he said was, "So. You like Christmas."

Flint rolled his eyes and gave a little crooked smile to the ceiling. He didn't dispute the statement.

"I mean," Silver kept going, "you _like_ Christmas. You might even love Christmas. Christmas is your bag, your jam, your cup of hot cocoa and a mug of marshmallows." Anxiousness was creeping up between his shoulder blades like a chilly lizard. "You've listened to me complain about Christmas for two solid months, and not once -- not once -- did you ever argue with me, about this anyway, or tell me I was being a grinch. You let me blather on like a raving lunatic and this whole time you've been living amongst the fucking elves in all this splendor." 

Silver didn't know what, exactly, he was upset about. Which was the flavor of both the evening and the month. 

Flint looked at him and said, at the speed one might speak to someone who'd just conquered a coma, "You were here two days ago."

Silver thought about this and remembered it to be accurate. They'd had lunch at one o'clock for the thirty minutes Flint closed the store every day. Silver brought over turkey sandwiches with bacon and cranberry mayo on toasted oat. For dessert, Flint ate two peppermint bark cookies and Silver ate the last pumpkin muffin from the morning's batch. Though the bookshop had a perfunctory amount of tinsel and some impersonal velveteen stockings hanging along the edge of the check-out counter, Flint's house had not been decorated for Christmas. They'd talked about whatever: belligerent, confused, or panicking customers; Larry, who was known to every business owner on the square as the guy who left pamphlets about a UFO cult he was into in store restrooms; the square decorations, which were bringing in extra foot traffic after dark; the snow, which was being coughed out of the sky at irregular intervals as if from a flock of consumptive gray sheep. Still, Silver had gone back to the last few hours of the cafe's being open that day feeling less skittish, less queasy. Better, in general. Better about what, he couldn't have said at the time, and he couldn't say now. Better hadn't lasted.

He found himself in one of the two broken-in armchairs Flint liked to read in. Flint was in the other, pulled up close enough their knees touched, and was unfolding a wooly tartan blanket over Silver. 

"I should go," Silver said. "You probably have things you're supposed to be doing tonight."

"Tell me why you're a bad person," Flint said, while fussing with tucking the blanket under Silver's thighs.

Silver took a long breath. Flint watched him with abnormal patience.

"You know how I have this ritual going up the stairs to my apartment?" Silver began. Since he lived above the cafe, said apartment was just next door; Flint had visited many times.

"Okay?" Flint's whole face radiated amusement.

"At the bottom of the steps I get in the stair lift with the mail," Silver said, trying to ignore him, "and open my mail as the chair squeaks its way to the top." The chair lift was a used model from the 1980s so representational of the decade it practically came with its own mullet. "Today a card from Madi arrived."

Flint's eyebrows ticked up in sympathy. "Ah."

"Yeah." Silver didn't want to throw up; the only way to be certain that wouldn't happen was to skim along the surface of his feelings, i.e. absolutely not looking at Flint's face anymore.

"How is she?" Flint asked. His hand on Silver's good knee was an anchor.

"Fine, I guess. The card just said 'Happy holidays, Love, Madi.' That's all it said. And I don't know." He closed his eyes. He only distantly recalled having taken the lift back down and of going outside, the lights in the square's trees blurring as he walked forward without purpose. (Or much stamina, apparently, since the bench where he landed was maybe a 30 second walk from his own cafe door.) "I think maybe everything I've done this year, I did for the wrong reasons." Everything was burning now, fires in his eyes and throat. "I know she's not coming back; I knew that a year ago. I fucked everything up and can't undo it." _I miss her, I miss her, I miss her._ "But opening the cafe, all the community outreach bullshit, all the being a good citizen and advocate and business alliance associate whatever-it's-called-- Not bailing or skipping town, not going back to any of my former, um, careers."

"Con artist, grand larceny," Flint helpfully supplied. "Didn't you also sell weed for a while?"

"Excuse me," Silver said, opening his eyes with what felt like an audible *pop*. "I sold decadent and delightful fudge concoctions that happened, on occasion, to contain ingredients that, on occasion, were considered controlled substances." He wiped his face with the back of his hand. "I still sell those brownies at the cafe, just without the medicinal properties. And like everything else, I do that because it makes me appear to be a good person, when in reality I'm just wearing, like, good person jeans and this plaid button-down."

Flint slid his hand beneath Silver's until their fingers interlaced. He was so obviously trying not to laugh, the sight of it knocked something loose inside Silver's chest.

"You know why I opened the bookshop?" Flint asked.

Huh. The slight change of subject intrigued Silver. "No."

"Two reasons." A smirk began to form on Flint's mouth. "Buying the property prevented that dipshit town council president of ours from being able to plow this whole block under to bring in a fucking development firm, the result being that the square's as gentrified as it's going to get, and a diverse population of people who were already here can afford to stay here." He squeezed Silver's hand. "Secondly, I needed to launder half a million dollars."

Silver felt his brain go offline for a second. When it returned, he said, "Do you sell enough books in a town this small for that to work?"

"Seeing as how you are unclear on how money laundering works," Flint said, "yes, it does."

"All right," Silver said, a laugh bubbling out of him.

"You like me so much better now that you know I'm a wealthy criminal, don't you?" Flint's smirk had grown into his shark smile, the one Silver had no immunity to.

"In my defense, I assumed you were rich somehow already," Silver said. "Like maybe a part-time hitman or some sort of drydock pirate. You sell new and mostly used books in a town the size of a teapot and you haven't had to file bankruptcy." 

"Yeah," Flint said. His smile faded except in his eyes. "So you're worried that you pretended to be a good person for a year, that's the source of your agita?"

"I think maybe deep down I thought if I did the right things, it would help," Silver said, pushing through the crushing feeling that had returned. "I could show Madi I was different." He swallowed and took a shuddering breath. "It's not like I sent her a five page handwritten letter telling her all about the regulars at the cafe, the farm-to-table and food waste initiatives, the renovations, the food drive at the beginning of the month."

He hadn't told her about the times, increasingly frequent as the year progressed, that he'd spent with Flint, talking nonsense, eating leftovers, just hanging out or going for a walk. Trying to keep his focus off certain things, like the way Flint fidgeted, argued, was always reading nine books at once, could make Silver laugh by having a sense of humor so dry it would lower the humidity in the room; could make Silver lightheaded just by saying goodnight softly. "I wanted to tell her, but I didn't," Silver said.

"Maybe you could just call--"

"I'm not even certain this is about her. I mean, it _is_ , god." Silver shook his head. "And it isn't. 'Cause if she were here, I'd have still done all this shit for the wrong reasons."

"Says who?" Flint was leaning closer. "You think the people buying coffee at dark o' thirty give a crap why, in your heart of hearts, you're selling fresh brewed legal stimulants? The parents who hang out at lunchtime, toddlers in tow, just so they can have food they didn't have to cook and talk with other people who can speak in complete sentences? The teachers who bring in swarms of students after they've endured the so-called historical attractions the square has to offer?"

"Oh. I've created a bastion of inclusiveness and culture -- I'm saving the world, that's what you're saying."

"You're a barely reformed grifter and a passable chef." Flint's gaze was entirely fond, and Silver hoped the low light in the room hid the warmth in his own cheeks that resulted from it. "You just happen to have sketchy mental health and are slightly allergic to Christmas. There's a cure for that."

"Therapy?" Silver ventured.

Flint shrugged. "I guess. But I was going to suggest rum."

"Wise."

"And you should call Madi someday, to say more than hi and how are you and by the way I'm a terrible person."

Silver dropped his head in defeat. "Remember when I first opened the cafe and for some reason everyone on my staff was convinced you and I were legendary rivals?" Silver's lunch shift manager, Billy, had even worked out a specific whistle with a couple of the waitstaff, to warn them when Flint came over for take away. "I'm beginning to think they were right and you've been a villain this whole time. Beyond the criminal enterprise bookstore stuff." He waved around his hand.

Flint indulged him with a nod. "Would you like a drink or not?"

Silver swallowed. He truly did want...a drink. But that desire was a dangerous water. "I should go," he said instead, standing as steadily as he could and leaving the blanket behind.

He looked around once. His apartment wasn't decorated for the season at all. He tried not to dwell on how the rooms would be cool and dark when he'd get home in a few minutes. The holidays would be over in a few days -- everything would revert and reset, and he'd be fine. Maybe he could see the star in Flint's tree from his hallway.

Flint stood as well. When Silver glanced up, Flint seemed… How did he seem? He was looking down at his hands, and he was twisting his hands together, an unguarded gesture Silver had seen a hundred times. 

Silver found himself blinking at a clear answer: Flint was resigned. 

Oh, too benign a word, Silver thought, his chest tight. Lonesome, he thought. Longing.

Silver thought, It isn't just me feeling it. I'm not imagining this.

He said, "Thank you, you know, for finding me tonight." He cleared his throat as Flint schooled his face into something polite and neutral. "If there's one thing I will take as an unequivocal good from this year, it's our friendship." 

Flint waited a beat. "Well. You're welcome." He cleared his throat too. "I think. As for rivalries, I personally think we're better off as partners. Of a type." 

Silver's mind did one of its patented, winter Olympics worthy toe loops around the word partner. 

"And listen," Flint continued, "if you ever need anything." He took a breath. "Ask. Okay? Don't go wandering around in subarctic weather like an urchin with a head injury."

"Got it," Silver said. 

He didn't consciously step forward into a hug; a hug just happened, like an extension of his autonomic nervous system. And he didn't mean to keep holding Flint. It just happened, like they were both afraid gravity would suddenly drag them to the ground if they didn't keep standing there actively upright, Flint's hands braced on Silver's lower back, Silver with his chin hooked over Flint's shoulder and his fucking eyes hot for the hundredth time of the evening. Maybe he really did have allergies. Maybe he was allergic to fucking everything.

He pulled back the smallest amount possible. The fact of Flint not moving his hands away seemed promising, but Silver was going to attempt to be cautious. He watched Flint for another long moment, until Flint went very still in his arms, watching him in return. 

Silver said, "I don't know if this is asking for help exactly. But." He was almost whispering. "Would you like to kiss me?"

As an answer, Flint touched the pad of his thumb to Silver's jaw, the corner of his eye, and finally, s-l-o-w-l-y, the fleshiest part of his lower lip. At the precise moment Silver was about to lose his last shred of sanity, Flint replaced that touch with his mouth. Silver tilted his head so their noses brushed together and sank into the kiss, his hands rising to pull Flint's head as close as possible, Flint's tongue sliding against his as he gasped. The kiss was at once the gentlest and dirtiest kiss Silver had ever experienced; his whole body was engulfed in heat, which didn't prevent him from pressing ever nearer as though Flint were a heavy coat he could climb into. 

When they broke apart to catch their breath, Flint kissed Silver's temple. "Would you like to stay a while longer?"

"Would you like me to?" Silver asked, hoping the teasing tone wasn't the wrong one.

 _"Yes,"_ Flint said with dear, familiar churlishness. 

"Merry Christmas Eve Eve, then," Silver said, and captured Flint's mouth with his own again.

[](https://www.flickr.com/photos/182046727@N03/49296656866/in/dateposted-public/)

**Author's Note:**

> (photo taken by me, December 2019)


End file.
